Even if kids aren't full-on saying the f-word -- the Queen Mother of dirty words as portrayed in the holiday classic "A Christmas Story" -- many have taken to Cussing Lite: All the flavor of full-bodied swearing with half the societal rebukes.

This long, sweeping turn in the grammatical landscape is milder than comedian George Carlin's famous list of seven dirty words that can't be uttered on TV. (Sorry, they can't be printed in the newspaper, either.)

Many borderline words

Today, there's not a list, but an entire volume that pushes the envelope of verbal decency.

How long ago that has been. Running on television since Aug. 16, a multimillion-dollar ad campaign for Dish Network breezily tells viewers "TV doesn't have to suck." The complementary Web site displays the same unabashed pith: suckfreetv.com

Dish Network spokesman Mark Cicero said the company has "fielded some calls," but wouldn't break down the feedback into positive and negative.

"We analyzed information gathered from focus groups," Cicero said. "From the feedback we received, the groups did not interpret the ads as vulgar."

For parents trying to keep their kids on the linguistic straight and narrow, the current climate can be a challenge.

"For the last 40 years, a steady flow of previously verboten words has been making its way out of the gutter and into the mainstream of ordinary speech, vying for social acceptance and at least universal tolerance from the dotty senior set," said James Farrelly, English professor and director of film studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Robert Thompson, past president of the International Popular Culture Association, said when he was a child in the 1960s, saying "crap" would have gotten his mouth washed out.

"I have recently heard that word uttered in a 2nd-grade class and in a Presbyterian church -- by the teacher and preacher, respectively," said Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University. "`Sucks,' `bites' and words like that are currently being absorbed into the vernacular. Thus, their taboo origins are being dissolved."

Fifth grader Blair LeBlanc has heard and read worse.

Occasionally, the 11-year-old will stumble on mild expletives when she's online doing homework, but drifting a bit off subject.

She hears them in songs or on MTV.

"We use them kind of regularly," LeBlanc said of her and her friends.

Her suburban Atlanta house is something of the neighborhood kid magnet. Friends are over all the time.

"A lot of my guy friends use a lot more slang words and stuff," Blair said. "If we have too much homework, they might say, `I hate this crap.'"

She will speak her own near-swear.

"Sometimes I'll say `frickin,' because it's like slang for a worse word. I think it's OK," Blair said. "My mom, she'll let me say it sometimes. But if I say it to her or use it meanly to her or family or friends, she'll be mad."

Blair's mom, 41-year-old Cindy LeBlanc, said she hears substitute curses all the time when she's at Simpson Elementary.

"If they can't say full-out cuss words, they think the other word is OK," LeBlanc said. "They don't get disciplined for saying `sucks' or `freakin.'"

Growing up, LeBlanc remembers a "fear of God" kept her from swearing in front of her parents.

"If I even back-talked my mother I'd get a bar of wet soap in my mouth," she said. "When I back-talked, it was mild, like not wanting to go to bed at night."

She tries taking borderline words in stride.

"In the scheme of things, it's not cigarettes, and it's not drugs," LeBlanc said. "But it might be one more step closer to cigarettes or drugs or sexual experiences earlier than they should be."

Coolness factor

Vulgarity -- like other things labeled out of bounds -- has long held a coolness factor for kids and cultures. But when the real word is too much, the watered-down one still carries enough panache for the tween and under-10 set.

It's that borderline that fascinates Steve Peha, president of Teaching That Makes Sense, a company in Carrboro, N.C., that offers training and technology support for K-12 schools.

"As with most borders, it is always being pushed," Peha said. "But it gets pushed in an interesting way: from East to West, from urban to suburban and from minority to majority.

Even the milquetoast comic strip "Beetle Bailey" once exuded a mild vexation when Beetle asked what was on television. An annoyed Rocky responded, "What am I? A freakin' TV Guide?"

In Nancy Beggs' house, it's not cool to tell someone to "shut up." That's disrespectful. But that's mild when she hears kids talk mildly toxic trash. Some kids just don't know basic etiquette, she said, which includes proper and polite grammar.

"It's just a different world," the 46-year-old suburban Atlanta homemaker said. "They hear it all the time. `Damn' and `hell' are no big deal."